


your mouth as some surprise

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Challenge: sticksandsnark, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-16
Updated: 2009-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney came in to see her that morning just as the lelev's physician left, bustling in with a large mug of stout tea that he left steaming by Teyla's bedside while he pulled up the sash windows. The dawn light carried no more than a promise of the day's heat with it, but it helped banish the too-cool feel of Ksan's fingertips against Teyla's skin, and she turned her face to greet it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your mouth as some surprise

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Nny](http://villainny.livejournal.com) for the [sticksandsnark](http://sticksandsnark.livejournal.com) challenge, for the prompt "Either (or both) being in a situation that is out of their natural element - working together." With many thanks to Cate and Trin for short-notice betaing.

Rodney came in to see her that morning just as the _lelev_'s physician left, bustling in with a large mug of stout tea that he left steaming by Teyla's bedside while he pulled up the sash windows. The dawn light carried no more than a promise of the day's heat with it, but it helped banish the too-cool feel of Ksan's fingertips against Teyla's skin, and she turned her face to greet it.

"Better," Rodney said as he stepped back, handing her the tea, settling the blankets around her and helping her to brush the hair back from her face, all while carrying a cloth bundle under one arm. "You need some fresh air in here." For just a moment, Teyla let herself feel irritated—Rodney was treating her with the same careful, brisk affection that he did Torren, and she was long past childhood; she could tie back her own hair—before forcing the feeling aside. With her leg as it was, and all her left side still a mass of bruises beneath the poultice of heating _khramo_ herbs, it would be both foolish of her and hurtful to refuse the help which Rodney had been giving her so generously these last ten days.

"They finally rustled up some new clothes for me," Rodney said, shrugging with the arm which held the cloth bundle pinned against his side. Crumpled up in a ball as they were, it was hard for Teyla to see clearly, but she thought she could make out a pair of baggy brown trousers, a dark green tunic. "Could be worse, I suppose—they could be making me wear curtains."

Teyla arched an eyebrow as she sipped at her tea, but said no more. If Rodney wished for her to understand the reference—

"You know, from _The Sound of Music_? It's an Earth movie, a classic—depending on how you define classic, of course—about a poorly socialised nun who sings to a gaggle of children and makes them wear curtain-clothes while running around mountain tops and hiding from Nazis."

—then he would tell her of his own accord.

"I see," Teyla said simply, because the pain medications Ksan had given her earlier dulled her thoughts enough that she was not presently fit for the task of asking Rodney to explain the plot of a movie—an extra frustration, this, the way words did not align themselves to her purposes in the first few hours after each dose of _npeng_, the way her thoughts could be made to fall as still as her limbs. The simplest of sentences had been an effort these last few mornings, but the memories of Rodney's explanation as to why John occasionally referred to Ronon as Chewie had been slow to fade—as had the plotlines of all six movies, and some of what Rodney had told her was the 'expanded universe.' It had all seemed to Teyla to be vastly more complicated than even the most trashy of the Keefin Berrsha novels her father used to devour with such pleasure.

"You should get Sheppard to show it to you," Rodney continued, seemingly unaware of the smile that was tugging at the corners of her mouth, "when we get back home. Make him tell you about the time he—well, I'm pretty sure he will anyway when it gets to the bit about the edelweiss. You'll see the parallels to our current situation. Well. Minus the Nazis." He moved the bundle of clothes from one arm to the other, then leaned in to tuck the comforter a little more securely around her. "Sure you don't want more tea? Only I'd better go—no rest for the impossibly gifted, places to go and urchins to teach. I'll see you for dinner, hmm?"

He smiled at her—the corners of his eyes crinkling up as they did when, in spite of himself, Rodney was feeling content—and hurried out the door. With him gone, Teyla's bedroom was once more quiet and still, undisturbed save for the breeze that rattled the window in its frame, and the exhale of her breath as Teyla rode out the worst of the ache in her leg. This was the worst part of the morning, always: when the _lelev_'s inhabitants were busy at their morning tasks, and all Teyla could do was lie here and sip her tea while she counted the number of tiles in the ceiling and sought the patterns of old Athosian constellations in the veins of the blue-and-white glaze. The hours were very long, without so much as an elder's work to do: spinning thread, or sharpening knives. She was, Teyla thought, beginning to understand why John had been found guilty so often—by both Jennifer and Carson—of breaking out of the infirmary before he was ready.

***

Rodney returned that afternoon, as he had promised. At some point between classes, he had changed from his BDUs—battered and worn now perhaps beyond the hopes of all but the most skilful of seamstresses—and changed into the clothes Mennang had given him. In the tunic and trousers, with padded boots on his feet, Rodney might almost have been a native of the valley, were his complexion not too pale. His return brought with it a welcome burst of chatter, together with a waft of warm _kreeta_ flower-scented air through the door from the courtyard outside, and Teyla greeted him with a smile.

Rodney was, as ever, a welcome mix of obliviousness and attention. He did not ask her how she had spent the morning, nor did he betray any sign of noticing the flinch she couldn't suppress when he lifted her from the bed and placed her into the wheeled chair which the _lelev_'s mothers had provided for her use; yet he settled a blanket over her bruised legs with such care that Teyla felt like a child once more, being swaddled by an over-solicitous mother. Once she was safely settled, Rodney wheeled her out into the empty courtyard, talking all the while of his students: of what they had covered that day during their classes, what appalling lapses he had uncovered in their knowledge of the universe, what mockery they had made of Rodney's complete ignorance of the most basic elements of Engarean history or culture or politics.

"Because of course," Rodney finished as he sat down next to her on one of the stone benches that lined the open space, shooing away some of the tame _tengel_ birds that had settled there, "it's completely hilarious that someone from a different galaxy wouldn't know which war started because some Engarean emissary was found bonking the wrong man at the wrong time."

Teyla tilted her face back and closed her eyes, letting the late summer sun seep in rich and slow through every pore. "Bonking?"

Even without opening her eyes, she could tell that Rodney was flushing.

"Okay, so maybe that's not the exact phrase that Tissi used…"

Since Tissi was a shy child, perhaps thirteen summers old, with a tendency to hide behind her dark braids, Teyla was quite certain that she hadn't expressed herself so. "Maybe not," she said mildly; the feel of the sunlight against her skin was blunting the edges of the worst of her pain.

"But you have to admit, it's a little messed up that twelve-year-olds are less interested in, in the heart of the universe than they are in some kind of melodramatic, soap opera-esque take on something that happened forty years ago."

Teyla arched one eyebrow without opening her eyes.

Rodney coughed. "Ah. Yes. Twelve-year-olds. Point taken."

"But all went well apart from that?" Teyla knew that the first cycle Rodney had spent doing this—teaching children in return for their room and board; schooling himself to patience while he taught them their figures, for the sake of Teyla's health—had seen enough red faces and angry tantrums from Rodney alone to make Teyla wish for a Wraith to take on by herself, just to get rid of her own frustration. Things had seemed a little easier of late, however—while she doubted Rodney would ever make a naturally easy teacher of small children, familiarity with his charges had not bred contempt in him, and a gaggle of the _lelev_'s children now learned their arithmetic and their science and a highly-edited version of recent galactic current affairs from him each day.

"Well, it's no Stanford," Rodney said, then cocked his head to one side. "By which I mean the students are nowhere near so annoying, can actually take direction, and there's no bureaucracy to deal with. So yes, fantastically well, actually."

"I am glad to hear it."

Rodney hummed in the back of his throat, a low noise of contentment. "Yes, it's always nice when they're not egregiously stupid. Some of the brighter ones—the teenagers, I mean—I was thinking, when we get back to Atlantis… well, Elizabeth always had hopes of establishing that academy, didn't she? And with the IOA off our backs, I don't see why we can't do it now."

Teyla smiled. "We shall certainly have plenty of time to plan this new school of yours."

Rodney waved a hand at her. "I'll bet you this year's salary that Sheppard and Ronon will be back over that pass before the first snows."

Teyla certainly hoped so; while she was certain that Torren was safe and thriving, fussed over by his father and his cousins and his Aunts Samantha and Jennifer, she missed her son greatly and was impatient to see his well-beloved face once more. "What was it you said a few weeks ago, Rodney—that you were planning to build a fort from all the 'worthless, worthless green-tinged Kleenex' in which the IOA paid your salary?"

"The idiom still stands!"

There was silence between them for a time, until Rodney cleared his throat. "Did Mennang look at it today?"

"No. She said she would give the setting and the poultice several days to take properly before she unwrapped the splint."

"Herbology," Rodney muttered, the fine lines around his eyes deepening with what Teyla had long since realised was a combination of worry for her and disdain for unscientific method. "It's like we've walked into a Harry Potter book—better living through zoological stupidity, and kids coming out of the walls."

"I do not know," Teyla said, slowly, teasingly, preferring to divert Rodney from the beginnings of a rant that would leave both of them homesick, "I do not feel that Eshang's beard is quite as impressive as Hagrid's."

The debate over relative length and bushiness lasted until the bell rang for dinner, and the joined the throng flooding into the low-roofed assembly for the evening meal.

***

As with every other meal, _nzad_ formed the chief portion of their dining: a thick and glutinous porridge that was undoubtedly nourishing, yet nearly always far too salty for Teyla's palette. She ate it, of course—the seasons on Athos when hunting had been poor had long ago taught her not to scorn plentiful food, whatever its variety—but she did not look forward to it with the same enthusiasm that Rodney did. This evening, however, when Mennang stood up at the beginning of the meal and clapped her hands for the servers to step forward, there were tart _neema_ berries to accompany the _nzad_, some _tsang_ fish, and baskets of fresh-baked bread.

Rodney and Teyla, both practised by now in Engarean table manners, swapped bowls with one another—as everyone else was doing with their table partners—when Mennang began to speak. "The act of offering," she intoned, slim hands raised up so that the sleeves of her red robes fell back around her elbows, "is the offering itself; the intention is the deed. Let our gift here echo the gift of self; let the gift of self free us to move forward on the Path."

"The Path and the Journey," murmured those sitting around Teyla, while Rodney popped a piece of bread into his mouth. Rodney never made the effort to show the _lelevis_' prayers much more courtesy than keeping silent while they were being said, but Teyla had been surprised, the first day she had been able to join the others for a meal, to find that she could barely do much more herself—it was difficult to remember now the woman she had been before that first meeting with Aiden and John, the woman who had had faith enough in the wisdom of the Ancestors to ask for their guidance at the dawn of each day. Close quarters with the consequences of their actions meant that it had been quite some time since Teyla had last placed her fingertips against her forehead and asked Cordellah, long revered as the founder of Athos, for her help.

Once the meal was over, the students and the lelevi moved back to their studies and their work. Rodney bustled off after them—one of the older Mothers had a collection of manuscripts which Rodney had taken to studying in the evenings, believing them to be somewhat corrupt copies of Ancient scientific and philosophical texts—and left Mennang to help Teyla back to her rooms.

"Rodney seems to have found his role amongst us," Mennang said, good humour tinging her voice, as always. "Much as I might have doubted it at the beginning."

"He has some experience with making a home for himself in new places," Teyla said smoothly. "You have all been very good to welcome us among you."

The Mothers of the Grey Peak _lelev_ had been more than generous—taking them in, helping Teyla recover from her injuries—but Teyla had told them little about her past, or Rodney's, and nothing at all about Atlantis. If they had noticed her reticence, the _lelevi_ had said nothing. Teyla was certain that they were all honourable women, devoted to their community and their chosen life, to the children they were raising here and to the commitment they had given to helping any passing traveller who sought their aid. Yet Teyla found she could not trust them; she had had a friend in Sora kei Tyrus once, and the childhood secrets they had shared had meant little when weighed against a knife's blade.

"It would have been," Mennang murmured, taking care when she wheeled Teyla over the threshold of the door so that she did not jar her leg, "rather difficult to turn away your Rodney from our gates. He is a very… a very _persistent _man."

Teyla allowed herself a smile; from some distance along the collonaded passageway, she could hear Rodney's voice, rising and falling in time with the tempo of his thoughts. "Your tact does you credit, Mother."

Mennang's quiet civility did not fail her, either, when she and Ksan helped Teyla back onto her bed. Teyla gritted her teeth against the pain—the grind of shattered nerves against one another, the protestation of bruised skin—as she let the mattress support her weight. She had never been one to nap, to spend an afternoon curled up beneath soft blankets, but now she accepted Mennang's kindness with a wordless gratitude so profound it almost brought tears to her eyes.

"Sleep," Ksan said, smoothing her cool and slender fingers over Teyla's forehead while Mennang tucked a heated brick in under the covers, against her feet. "You shall be a little further along the road, come the morning."

***

She was, in truth, much better than she had been when the others had carried her through the gates of the _lelev._ Teyla did not remember much of the chase which had led them here, the scraps of memories left to her made coherent only by the thread of Rodney's narrative: the malfunctioning 'gate, the swarm of Wraith darts, the tumbling impact which had torn her free of her restraints and sent her crashing into the bulkhead and unconsciousness. It had taken them some hours after that to make it from the downed jumper in the woods to the _lelev_ on the valley floor, but Teyla remembered nothing of that but the pain like a lance in her leg, the low rumble of Ronon's voice while he spoke to her and urged her to stay with them.

Teyla did remember John and Ronon leaving them some days later, trekking east with a caravan of merchants to the town where, some of the _lelevi_ had heard tell, there was a Ring of the Ancestors. She had woken in the early dawn light to the sound of her three men standing at the foot of her bed, John and Rodney arguing in loud whispers about who should go and who should stay—Rodney's vehemence that they shouldn't split up, not when this planet's electromagnetic field made so much expensive junk of their radio equipment; John's insistence that Rodney and Teyla were in no condition to travel, but that he and Ronon could make it across the chain of valleys to safety more quickly than the four of them could.

"She needs a doctor, Rodney, she needs—"

"And you think what, you're going to find a trauma specialist in Three Yurts and a Goat City? I don't—"

"Rodney," Teyla had murmured, her voice so cracked with thirst and disuse that she was barely audible.

Rodney had turned and looked at her; his mouth was set in a tight line, his eyes made a brighter blue by the fading bruises that ringed them both. For a moment, he was silent, and then he'd said _fine, fine_, flapping his hands at John and Ronon, _go and do your John Wayne thing before I throw you out myself._

Ronon and John left that evening. Rodney had described their departure to her in an attempt to divert her while Ksan and Tinda changed her dressings—the three attempts it took John to clamber into his _kteera_'s saddle; how Ronon's knees were folded almost up to his ears by the short length of his stirrups—hands sketching out the long line of the caravan, the bales of cloth and spices for trade swaying from side to side atop the humps of the pack _kteera_, setting out from the _lelev_'s gates towards the valley's end and the first mountain pass. Her head ached, and Teyla found it difficult to follow what he was saying—she longed for sleep, for closed eyes in a dim room—but the rhythm of his words was soothing.

"Suppose it's better if I do stay here though, hmm?" he had said later, when he was smoothing an extra coverlet over her. "Those _kteera_ things spit, and you'll be able to keep me out of harm's way easier if I'm right here."

"Of course," Teyla had said, and managed a smile before she slept.

***

As her health came back to her, slowly, so too did the character of the room around her change. Teyla could not recreate the little luxuries she had taken such a private pleasure in back on Atlantis—the Earth-manufactured mattress, the thick Mendelleno rugs, the clusters of expensive candles—nor could she entirely rid herself of the disorientation that came over her sometimes when she woke in the middle of the night, unable to catch the scent of sea salt on the air. In a plain, scrubbed sick-room, though, there was much to be said for even so little as a red blanket spread over her bed, or several sticks of sweet-smelling incense left to burn in a jar of sand on the table beneath the window. It made the room feel a little more as if it were a home to her while she was here amongst the _lelevi_, and that feeling brought with it its own measure of peace.

Rodney brought her some fresh-cut boughs from a _mohnra_ tree, saying that only that he had happened to see them while accompanying his students out into the lower reaches of the woods for something that he referred to only as an 'egg drop'. (Teyla did not ask; she feared it would be far too similar to events which had earned Rodney and Ronon a severe lecture from Colonel Carter not so long ago.) He left the branches on the painted ledge beneath the room's single window, the greenery vibrant against the blue paint. For many days, they were the first thing Teyla saw when she opened her eyes each morning; their sharp scent mingled with the denser smell of the incense, soothing her while she slept.

***

Teyla had wondered what Rodney would find to do for himself within the orderly confines of a _lelev_. Like in her aunt's _lelev_, the one at Grey Peak preserved a quiet routine from day to day—a round of chores and meditation which Teyla would not have thought ideal for keeping Rodney happy and occupied. Yet he took to it better than she had thought he would: he volunteered his services at the _lelev_'s school without Mother Besang having to drop more than the subtlest of hints, and while he would never be a natural with children, his oddly formal manners fit strangely well with the solemnity with which the Engareans approached their studies.

He took to it better than she did. It was not the environment to which Teyla objected—she had after all spent many happy hours in Merayni's community, visiting there with her father as a child, playing dress-up in red and gold _lelevi_ robes that were still many times too large for her. There was even something about the life of the contemplative that still appealed to her at times—when a headache oppressed her at the end of a too-long day; when the demands and requirements of her extended family seemed impossibly complex; when her team seemed determined to give the lie to the ages they had celebrated on their most recent birthdays. The problem was the fact that she had so little to do but lie here and obey the strictures of others, she realised late on her fourth day. Teyla had never thought of herself as a bad patient, and had frequently joined with Carson or Jennifer in chiding John and Ronon when they tried to bribe the nurses into releasing them too early, or with cajoling Rodney when he was certain that he required yet another round of testing.

Yet when she lay in the infirmary on Atlantis, Teyla never felt herself so isolated, so useless, as she felt herself here. On Atlantis, she was near to her team and her people and her son. If she could not act—if she could not heft a P90 or a bantos rod, if she could not attend meetings or to help break the ground for planting—then she could communicate, could feel herself in some way necessary. The _lelevi_ here were self-contained and self-sufficient in a way that spoke to the sincerity of their faith. Rodney had a means of occupying his days fruitfully. As her bruises began to heal and her bones to knit back together, Teyla realised that what she was feeling was frustration—that there was nothing she could _do_. One morning, tossing a handful of breadcrumbs to the songbirds which skittered across the sun-warmed cobblestones of the courtyard, Teyla smiled to herself—it was possible that she owed an apology to one John Sheppard.

***

"You know," Rodney told her over breakfast, "it's odd." His words were a little muffled; he was speaking around a wad of tart green _beeka_ nuts that he had secreted into his cheek, like a _mirka_ preparing for winter.

Teyla arched an eyebrow at him and waited for him to continue.

"I mean, it's essentially a one-room village schoolhouse I'm teaching in, but I've drafted an entire syllabus that should see them through the next three years, if whoever replaces me keeps them going at an optimal pace." His eyes were bright, and he waved his chopsticks around as if to sketch the plan out for her in mid-air. "I had administrators in Ivy League schools—who believe you me are like the attack ninjas of departmental secretaries—who couldn't get me to come up with a lesson plan. Huh." He stared off into the middle distance for a moment. "It's like I actually want the little brats to learn something."

Teyla smiled. "You have long enjoyed the process of… imparting your knowledge to others, Rodney," she said, as diplomatically as she knew how. "It is not unusual that you should be enthusiastic about teaching a willing and eager audience, however young they may be."

Rodney snorted. "No, usually I enjoy yelling at Zelenka when he gets stuff wrong, and loudly pointing out his errors in front of a group of his academic peers. This is entirely different." He paused for a moment, then sniffed and made a face at her. "God, this is one of those learning moments, isn't it? I hate personal growth so much. I'm going to have to email Jeannie about this when we get back home."

Teyla hid her laughter behind her cup of stout tea.

***

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Teyla asked Mennang the next evening. She could sit upright now without being always conscious of the pressure she was exerting on each particular part of her skin, and though her leg itched beneath its _khramo_ poultice, it was not irritating enough to be a hindrance to her. "I feel quite useless sitting here, knowing that there is work to be done. I can knit, and spin, or carve; and Rodney will tell you that I should not be allowed to cook, but I have always been told that my preserves are quite—"

"That will not be necessary," Mennang told her. Her smile was serene and unwavering, like the curve painted on the face of a doll. "All that we require you to do is to rest and be well."

"I would simply like to do my part," Teyla tried again. "Rodney can teach, and you have your duties—I would be happy if there was some small task I could perform to earn my keep here, to thank you for the assistance you have given to both of us."

"Why are you so anxious to hurry your Journey along the Path?" Mennang smoothed Teyla's hair back from her face, as if she were a fretful child. Teyla was surprised to find herself gritting her teeth against a sudden burst of anger. "I am sure we shall find something for you to do when Mother Ksan thinks you are ready for it."

Teyla had long considered herself to be in control of her temper, much as she had considered herself to be the best judge of what would be the most productive use of her time. "I see," she said, calling on all the reserves of tact which Charin had inculcated in her over the years, much though she was tempted—for just a moment—to call Mennang by some of the choicer words Ronon had learned in his years in the Satedan Special Units. "We shall just wait and see what the Path brings me, then."

Mennang beamed at her.

***

"I think I shall help you with your teaching," Teyla said to Rodney, perhaps a little more firmly than she had intended.

Rodney looked down at her, the expression on his face careful, as if he knew that there was something behind this declaration and was trying to parse out possible causes. "I suppose your knowledge of colloquial Ancient is better than mine," he said eventually.

"I can teach something of the history of the old Engarean empire as well," she offered, "though I am afraid I have forgotten much of what my mother ever taught me."

"And hit the children with _bantos_ sticks if they act up!" Rodney said, brightly enough that she knew to swat his arm only in mock outrage. "Excellent. I'll make sure to have a shiny red apple ready and waiting for you on your first day, Miss Emmagan."

A little sigh of relief escaped from her, quite involuntarily. There was much to be said for having before her the prospect of mornings spent doing something. If it was not quite a return to active duty with her team, striking down enemies before they could attack, helping Samantha draft first contact policy, or singing to her son in the mornings—to all the things that she had chosen to be her life's work, to all the things that had chosen her—then it was still work worth doing: work that would give shape to her days, as it had to Rodney's.

"I'm thinking of growing a beard," Rodney told her in return, tone suggesting that this was a truly weighty decision. He was helping Teyla to make one of her slow rounds of the courtyard, a limping circuit that ached and made her sweat and grunt, and which was slowly helping her to put more and more weight on her healing leg. "All they have here are straight razors, and I swear, every time Lonkam comes near me with one, I start humming the theme to _Sweeney Todd_."

"I think a beard would become you very well, Rodney," Teyla told him. "Quite distinguished."

"Really?" There was a note to his voice, high-pitched and pleased, that made Teyla look up from her feet's careful progress. She was surprised to find that the high points of his cheekbones were flushed a little pink.

"Yes," she said, and on impulse leaned up to kiss him on his stubbled cheek.

***

Rodney's beard grew in a bright mixture of silver and blond. Catching sight of himself in a pool of water, he complained that it made him look like his Great-Uncle Erwin, but he made no move to shave it off. Indeed, he seemed rather pleased when some of the smaller children—Mikshi and Lopayt and Ksender especially—decided that the beard made _Lem_ Rodney look a little like the warrior Rimshi from _The Tale of Rimshi and Tsander_.

("Maybe," Mikshi said.

"Lil' bit," agreed little Lopayt, around the thumb in her mouth.

"Not tall enough," said Ksender.

"Skin's too pale," said Mikshi, "Like a Southerner."

"Your support for my dramatic endeavours is touching," Rodney said drily. )

Teyla did not quite see the resemblance herself—she had watched too many of the old autolumes with her father as a child to be able to picture anyone other than Tseemee M'Lanthon in the role of Rimshi—but that did not stop her from laughing when she came across Rodney unexpectedly one day, re-enacting the Theft of the Relic with a gaggle of laughing children taking the parts of the city people and the mountain folk. If he had been reluctant to take part at first, if he had raised objections about how much more progress they had to make today in physics according to his self-concocted syllabus, there was no sign of such things now.

"Rarr!" Rodney said in most ferocious of voices, but it was too late—Rimshi had been captured by the nefarious city folk, and so Rodney went down flailing beneath the assault of dozens of child-clumsy, tickling hands, rolling laughing on the grass and begging for mercy. Teyla was glad for the support her walking stick gave her while she, too, laughed at the sight of him.

Later, when the children were trailing off after some of the Mothers in search of the baths and their evening meal, Teyla lowered herself carefully down onto the grass to sit next to Rodney. He was lying flat on his back, his clothes rumpled and grass-stained, with a great smear of dirt along one cheekbone. The laughter had faded from his face, retreated back to hide in the curve of the corner of his mouth, the fine lines around his eyes, but that habitual line between his brows had vanished. He looked content, Teyla thought—and when he opened his eyes to look up at her, they were very blue, the expression in them was solemn but calm, as if he had come to some resolution after a long time spent considering.

The silence that existed in the space between them then was not awkward, but Teyla told herself that the shiver she felt running down her spine was a consequence of the fading sunlight and the cool breeze coming down off the mountains.

After a while, Rodney turned the conversation abruptly to a reminiscence of the last time John had had the care of Torren for a day—a day memorable for being the only one so far which had reduced Samantha Carter to helpless laughter in the gate room, and for being the last day that John had sported a left eyebrow for a period of several weeks—and Teyla joined in with him agreeably enough. If Rodney had decided that words were still preferable to actions, she would not oppose him, not when she had not yet decided what words she herself needed to speak.

Besides, John had looked quite ridiculous with only one eyebrow, and reliving Ronon's gales of laughter on their return to the city that evening was always worthwhile.

***

They were not the only guests at the _lelev_. The Mothers frequently played host to members of their birth families who lived in far-flung valleys, or to tired travellers who were making their way eastward, from the dry highlands of the western continent to trade or to live in the great cities in the east. Some of them stayed for one night only, spurred onwards by the requirements of business or family; others lingered for a little while, lulled into a temporary contentment by the trees and the mountains, by the Singer sending out the call to prayer each morning, by the gentle rhythm of each day.

Teyla talked with them sometimes, sitting outside in the courtyard while they broke their fast and Teyla's quick fingers created another pair of thick socks from brightly coloured wool. This was the kind of life she could envision herself having led if circumstances had been different—if she had never had to take up the fight against the Wraith, if someone else had been there and able to take on her responsibilities, she could have been sitting here under the spreading boughs of a tree in the welcoming heart of a _lelev_, talking with Miritt á Undugu of this years _nitfi_ harvest, her son on her knee while she spun out great threads of yarn.

Her stay here was only temporary though, as was that of Miritt and her family. With the sun gaining height in the sky, Miritt stood and gathered her family to her—her cousin and niece, two gangling teenage sons—organising them as they readied their pack animals for the last stage of their journey, onwards to the next valley but one. She left Teyla with a smile on her face, and a laboriously written recipe for _ntaxa_ berry tea.

Teyla waved goodbye to them, then went with Rodney when he arrived to help her into the assembly room for lunch. They had only just taken their seats when the wooden roof echoed with a too-familiar sound—the echo of a Wraith dart passing low overhead. It was heading away from them, down in the direction of the lake, and Teyla's pulse skittered and stopped for a moment—she could sense the Wraith's hunger overhead, its thrill in the hunt and its joy at finding such easy prey out in the open, at finding—

"Miritt!" Teyla gasped, fingers flying out to reach for a weapon that was not there. "Her family!"

Rodney was up and running before she had finished speaking, knocking over his chair in his haste to go to their aid; but by the time Teyla had made it to the door of the room, all she could see was the fading light of a culling beam, the rapidly shrinking line of a dart as it angled back up and climbed higher into the clear blue sky, the slump of Rodney's shoulders as he slowed first to a walk and then a halt, just outside of the _lelev_'s gates. She whirled round to look at the _lelevi_, to share with them the horror and the grief that was surely written large on her own face—to ease the pain in her heart and the pain in her head, because oh she could _feel_ the echoes of the joy that Wraith had taken in knowing that he would feed on those people trying to flee from its path—but not one of them had risen to join her. One or two of them were looking out after her and Rodney, their faces wearing an expression of mild curiosity, but Kanle seemed more interested in the baby nursing at her breast, and all the rest were talking softly or passing around steaming earthenware bowls of fish stew.

Teyla felt her jaw go slack with shock. "Why are you all just sitting there? There are _Wraith_ overhead—they have taken Miritt and her family!"

Ksan's face betrayed only confusion, her thinly-plucked eyebrows rising up in what seemed to be genuine confusion. "What would you have us do, Teyla?"

"_Help_ them," Teyla snapped, all the force of her anger behind her words. She swept out a hand, encompassing all of the women sitting before her: the dark and the fair, the old and the young and the middle-aged, the women whom she had thought had sought out this way of life because it promised something better. "We could track the dart, find the hive—if some of you will help us, we could _save_ them!"

"They have been taken by the Wraith, Teyla," Ksan said gently—as if Teyla hadn't seen, as if Teyla didn't know what that meant. "They have walked along their Path. It is not one we can accompany them on. We cannot turn the—"

"This is not _theology_," Teyla hissed at them, "She was going to visit her mother!"

Ksan looked at her with compassion on her face, but no clear understanding of why Teyla was upset, and Teyla knew that it was pointless, even while she wondered if that was the kind of person she could have been had things been different—if she had chosen to don the red robes, if she had never met the strangers who sought Athosian help one midwinter's night. She turned and made her way down the steps and out of the hall as fast as her still-halting steps could take her. She met Rodney halfway across the courtyard; his shoulders sagged under the green cloth of his tunic, and he looked as tired as Teyla had ever seen him.

"They're gone," he said, the corners of his mouth turned down with unhappiness. "There must be a hive ship passing through this system—only one of them, no sign of it coming back, but I think we should get the children down into the cellars, just in case. The stone should block the worst of the beams, if they—"

"They will not even help," Teyla said, and it was shocking how much of an effort it was not to cry. "They will not _try_."

Rodney looked at her, startled. "Not even to—"

"No," Teyla said, and she was fiercely glad at the strength with which Rodney hugged her—it was a sign that he cared as much as she did, that he knew why this was wrong. "I want to be home," she whispered against his shoulder, against the soft cloth and the solid breadth of him, the scent of clean sweat and soap. "Rodney, I want to be able to do something. This is never what I wanted."

He did not question her, but pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head, to where the soft coils of her braids were slipping free of their pins. "You know," he said after a while, his arms still looped loosely around her; his voice was pitched low and confidential, somewhere just above her ear. "For years, back on Earth? I was the foremost expert in at least, oh, five related fields that had anything to do with the Stargate. Astrophysics, theoretical physics, the kind of math that… well. I wrote a lot of papers and came up with a brand new way of theorising subspace that trust me, Sam is _still_ jealous about, and when I was 27, if you'd given me the existence of a cache of ZPMs as a granted, I'd probably have been able to come up with a means of intergalactic travel before I'd ever so much as seen a gate. But I didn't… until I got to Atlantis, it was all theoretical. I didn't understand. And then it was…"

"Then it was real," Teyla finished for him, because she understood that for Rodney, Atlantis had been the first stage in a life that she had always lived: a life where consequences were formed of blood and bone, where things could never be theoretical, not at all; a life where she could never sit and wait and let others fall.

***

Later, some of the _lelevi_ gathered together and lit candles for Meritt and her family, and let fly several new prayer ribbons from the roof of the assembly hall. Rodney stood and watched them for a while before he helped Teyla limp back to her room. Her leg had been much better of late, but she had done too much today, and it ached steadily now.

"You know," Rodney said, voice suspiciously even, as he nudged open the door to her room, "it's not that they're _bad_ people, as such, but believe me when I say that—"

"You could really do with a beer right now?" Teyla had heard this particular rant many times before; the corners of her mouth twitched.

"Actually, I was going to say 'fuck this shit,' but that works, too," the tips of his fingers brushing against hers in mute comfort, and _oh_, Teyla was so glad he was here with her.

***

Teyla had been walking for some days with only a stick for aid by the time the sun set on the day of the _Tsangam _Festival. She felt herself more than well enough to overcome Rodney's objections and accompany him and most of the others from the _lelev_ on the procession—trooping out along the road which sloped gently down from the compound towards the small lake which had formed in the valley's bottom over the centuries. The _lelevi _had invited both her and Rodney to come along after all, and whatever views Teyla held about their philosophy, however little she felt she could trust them, she could not deny that they had been kind to both herself and to Rodney.

The paper lanterns carried by the Mothers lit up their procession, globes of softly glowing pastel colours picking out red robes and laughing faces, dark eyes and children dancing to their own songs in the swiftly-gathering twilight—Torren, she thought, would have been entranced by the spectacle. She missed him always, but the thought of his smile gave rise to a sharper pang of longing—Torren might well be taking his first steps by now, learning how to trust in the strength of his own limbs without Teyla there to see it. She had never been given to indulging in idle hopes, but not for the first time, Teyla found herself wishing that great distances could be covered in the blink of an eye, that a human body did not have limits to its endurance.

The _Tsangam_ was a little like the harvest festivals Teyla had celebrated with such enthusiasm in her youth, though for Rodney it seemed something entirely new—this Engarean celebration of the fish stock that formed such a vital part of their diet during the long winter months. Still, he joined in with the proceedings with good will, though there was bemusement clear in the lines around his eyes. He grumbled a little about his lower lumbar region, but still hoisted little Kthan onto his broad shoulders so that the toddler could gain a better view of the Elder Mothers standing out on the end of the dock, lighting the person-size pillar candle which would be left to glow for the whole night. He even went so far as to obtain a paper lantern for both himself and for Teyla—a yellow globe for him, a blue crescent moon for her—which they held out over the dark pool to entice the fish to the surface before scattering dried-petal confetti onto the waters.

"It is a blessing, I think," Teyla told him, trying as best she as she could to parse the High Engarean-inflected Ancient that the Mothers spoke during the ceremony. The syntax they used was quite different to the dialect she had grown up with back on Athos. "A prayer for the waters."

"Pretty," Rodney said, and he hummed in time with the shifting tones, the lilt and lull of the _lelevi's_ faith.

There was silence between them for a moment, a little peace amidst the bustle around them as the Mothers and their helpers began the task of distributing pieces of dense, sticky _Tsangam_ cake to the children. Then Rodney said, all in a rush, as if struggling to get the words out before his feelings could overwhelm their sense, "I don't think I could stay here if it wasn't for you."

Teyla frowned, bemused. She had thought Rodney glad to be here, in the absence of a speedy way to return to their city. "Rodney," she said gently, "you have only stayed in the _lelev_ because of me, and I am almost well now. If—"

"No, no," he said, worrying his fingers together—a habit which Teyla had not seen him indulge in much of late. "That's a… it's a different thing entirely."

He left her then, moving quickly back up the gentle hill towards the gates of the _lelev_, body bent forward as he hurried through the darkening night. Teyla watched him go, conscious of her own confusion and wondering what had happened that required her to look at Rodney like this: as if he were someone she did not know completely; as if there were some puzzle to him that she was required to solve.

***

Most people in the _lelev_, tired by their day's work and conscious of the scarcity of lamp oil, went to bed with the sun or shortly afterwards. Festival nights stretched out the waking hours, but not by much, and so when Teyla sat out that night to watch the stars flare into bright life against the ink-blue sky, the courtyard was empty around her. Quiet, too, but for occasional rustlings and coos from the _tengel_ that were roosting in the rafters overheard, and when Teyla exhaled, she could see her breath hanging in the air in front of her.

Rodney had improved on his ability to walk with a semblance of stealth—lessons from Ronon, no less than John's attempt to steal his breakfast muffins in the morning, had induced what Rodney called a forced evolutionary survival mechanism—but even so Teyla was far from startled when he sat down next to her. He _oof_ed as he stretched out his legs in front of him, and she watched carefully, from the corner of her eye, as he looked up at the stars.

"You can't see Atlantis from here," he said eventually, "or the Milky Way. We're in the wrong hemisphere, I think." He paused, and his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip before he pointed up at the sky just over the mountain peaks. "But I've, I've worked it out and I'm pretty sure that's Athos."

Teyla looked in the direction he was pointing, at a smear of old, cold light that might have been her first home. She tried to connect it to clear streams and green forests, to generations-old encampments and well-worn trails through the hills, to soft carpets of moss that felt cool and delicious beneath bare feet. It was difficult to do so—that Athos existed now only in her memories, a world that had come into being long after the light that she was seeing now had left its sun, a world that had ended when her people had had to leave behind the city of their ancestors. She found herself wondering what she would think if it were Atlantis she could see instead: if the lights in the sky above her had been refracted across the heavens from Atlantis' tangled spires.

"Rodney," she said, "have you been lonely here?"

The look he gave her was wary—as if he feared that her question contained a meaning that he had not understood, as if it were a test that he could only fail—and yet there was curiosity there, too. He was listening to her with all of his attention: a rare occurrence from Rodney, whose thoughts tended to fly in several directions all at once. Teyla felt herself unaccountably uncertain, almost nervous, and something in her stomach flipped over.

"Rodney?" Teyla asked again.

"I—well, right now we're living in a monastery with a hundred and forty other people, a flock of those _tengel_ things and a pet alien _goat_, so I don't know that _lonely_ is the term I would use to describe… and in general I like to think I'm a pretty sanguine—"

"That is not what I am asking you, Rodney."

Rodney huffed out a sigh, as heart-felt and as plainly put-upon as any Teyla had ever heard Jinto utter when Halling was making sure that he ate his greens. "There are… I suppose there have been times when I've missed the others. Radek's not entirely unintelligent, after all, he can hold up his end of a conversation pretty well, and Thursday evening chess with Sheppard was part of my routine, even if he _does_ insist on wearing those godawful—"

"Sometimes," Teyla interrupted him, watching his face carefully, "I am also lonely, Rodney. And I have been scared."

"You," Rodney said, voice catching on something like a laugh, "but you don't get scared, you're… you're _Teyla_."

"And so?" He made her smile; he made her heart full because she did not think that there could possibly be another person who could say that and sound as if he meant it, absolutely—who knew her weaknesses and her mistakes and who still thought her a marvel in his eyes.

"_So_?" Rodney boggled at her a little. "What do you mean, _so_, I think it's very obvious that—" and so Teyla had no choice but to lean in and kiss him. His words buzzed against her mouth for one long moment before he stilled against her; then one hand came up to tangle in her hair and Rodney kissed her back. He met her loneliness and her affection and her want for him with an intensity that Teyla had only seen glimpses of before: a longing that had been refracted through glances when he'd thought she was not watching, an emotion not given voice because neither of them, it seemed, had dared indulge in hope for far too long.

Teyla reached out and touched him back—traced the line of his bearded jaw with the palm of her hand, felt the muscles of his belly quiver beneath her fingertips—and if the circumstances of place, of lingering human frailty, would not allow them more than this for a little while yet, then there was still something to be said for a deferment that carried intention with it, the pause that was waiting to say _yes_. The kiss gentled and slowed, and Rodney moved away just enough that Teyla could see how his eyes were closed, how the curve of his mouth transformed his whole face when he was truly happy. Teyla let her forehead rest against his and found that she had no urge to look skywards and seek for her home in the cold distance when she belonged here, for now: in the warm circle of Rodney's arms.

***

Their wait did not grow any the easier—Teyla found the days no shorter, her eyes no less drawn to the clear horizon—nor did her separation from the rest of her family become any easier to bear. Yet there was a certain solace to be drawn from touch and low-pitched voices; a solace made all the more precious by how new it was, by how strange Teyla yet found it at times to know that here, in the palm of this man's hand, was where her choice resided.

The following evening, they took advantage of the Mothers' End-Week communal meditation to slip away to a secluded corner of the _lelev_. It was perhaps wrong to allow the others' urge towards humility to conceal their own shamelessness, their need for a comfort drawn purely from the closeness of another body, but Teyla found that she did not care overly much.

"Distraction," Rodney murmured to her between kisses, his thumb stroking soft against the groove of her collarbone. "They are very nice people and all, but it's not even been two days and this whole lack of privacy thing is already driving me—"

Teyla looked up at him solemnly and tried not to laugh. "As I believe you once wisely said, Rodney—fuck that shit," she said, enunciating her vowels as crisply as possible, just so that she could see his eyes go wide before she nipped at the curve of his lower lip, slid her arms around the breadth of his shoulders.

***

The noise of the jumper's engines woke them so early in the morning that even the most diligent of the Mothers had not had a chance to do much more than rub the sleep from their eyes. The low whine of it echoed through the courtyard and set the trees outside Teyla's bedroom window to dancing. She was out of her bed and belting her dress around her before her eyes were fully open, her heart telling her what her mind was still too sluggish to fully grasp—that John and Ronon had come back to them, that she had a way home to her city and her people and oh, _oh_, to Torren.

For once, it did not take much to rouse Rodney—he had fallen asleep beside her, boots kicked off while he snored gently into a pillow—and he was up and following her as soon as his eyes registered the smile on her face, his ears the noise of the engines outside.

"They're—"

"Yes," Teyla said, hardly able to speak for how joy was making her beam.

When she and Rodney got outside, they were just in time to see the jumper's hatch opening as it set down gently on the green grass of the _lelev_'s main meadow, scattering frightened goats and drawing a crowd of entranced children in equal measure. Ronon was the first to appear—still in full Engarean dress—followed by four Marines clad in BDUs, P90s at the ready, and lastly by a grinning John. They were both alive and whole, though John's white cloth headdress was slightly askew, and no matter how many times her men had come back to her, Teyla had never grown used to this—the way her heart skipped at seeing them return to her, alive and whole; the spark of adrenaline in her blood that made her breath come faster and her hands tremble.

"Took you and Florence of Arabia long enough," Rodney yelled at Ronon as they approached. The smile on Rodney's face was as broad as Teyla's own.

"Pirates," Ronon called back blithely by way of explanation, and perhaps that was all that Teyla needed—the proof that no matter what they had faced, her family had found a way to come back to her; that no matter what she had had to overcome, that she was still here; that even though there was still a halt in her stride, a reminder of past pain, she could still run strong and quick across a meadow in morning to meet John and Ronon, Rodney close by her side.


End file.
